Category Archives: Meta

Hey guys JR here, bringing you the formal announcement of this years Creators Club poster, something which we are trying to get to be an annual thing.

This years poster will be done by MadJack who came up with the idea of doing a Days Of Future Past cover themed poster. Since we haven’t done a superhero themed poster, I thought this would be a good theme (especially considering a certain film that came out last year). So, the idea is this; you guys have to create a self-portrait, either realistic or idealised, of yourself as a superhero. You can show powers and have poses other than the standard straight-on pose if you wish (zypping is also optional), but we must insist on two things. 1: Your character’s face must be forward facing and 2: No Masks, we want to see all of your wonderful faces. Also, no backgrounds, MadJack will deal with all of that stuff when he puts the poster together.

For your entry to be acceptable you must complete the following criteria. If you don’t then you don’t get on the poster.

1. Your entry must be in .png format. You must title it in standard contest entry style i.e. Username- Creators Club Poster (for example I would title mine JR19759- Creators Club Poster). Don’t screenshot the picture and send that in, export it as a .png please.

2. You MUST include the text for your entry. Mandatory. This is incase MadJack needs to re-export any of the files in a bigger or smaller format. You can include it as an attachment in the email or just paste it into the email, but you have to have the text accessible.

3. Your email has to be titled something applicable to the Creators Club, so its easy to recognise as not-spam.

4. You only have one entry, so make sure you’re happy with it before you send it in. It doesn’t have to be the worlds best creation, this is only for fun after all, but we don’t want endless revisions.

Once you’ve met all of those criteria, send your entries to MadJack at madjack@starnberg-mail.de. Submissions will be open from today until February 10th 2015. This is open to everyone in the community, you don’t have to be especially prolific or a Power User or anything, you just have to be a part of the Heromachine community. And remember, this isn’t a challenge, so just have fun with it.

If MadJack wants to add anything, then I’m sure he’ll do so in the comments, but other than that. JR out.

Greetings everyone, I would like to take a moment of your time to remind you all that we are looking for Nominations for the HeroMachine Hall Of Fame . Please take a moment to nominate your favorite HeroMachine creations from one of our community members! Find out what you need to do to nominate in the Link Below

Greetings fellow Machiners! This post is being made to enlist your aid. You see we here at Heromachine have decided we need some additional members of our Hall of Fame. Now here is how this is going to work, JR, myself, Linea, and dblade are each going to select One image made by a member of our community to be entered into the hall of fame, but we want to bring the total number of entries up to 10. JR will be holding a Character of the year poll which will bring the number up to five. This is where you all come into play. I am asking you all to nominate a piece of artwork (HeroMachine creations only) for the hall of fame, preferably not one of your own pieces, though doing so will be allowed if you really feel the need to. Nominations will be open starting today December 2nd 2014 and last until December 22nd 2014 9 am Eastern Time.

Once the nomination process is closed I will take all your nomination and place them in a giant poll which will Run from December 23rd until December 30th. On December 31st the 5 nominations with the most votes will be honored with a place in the HeroMachine Hall Of Fame!

Please post your nomination for the Hall Of Fame in the comments below by providing a link to the artwork in question. We will accept nominations posted here on our forms, posted to the Heromachine facebook page, or from Deviantart, all I ask is that you inform the owner of the piece that you have nominated them here so that if they wish they can request to be removed from the poll in the event they do not following the happenings of the Blog.

I want to give you all a big thank you in advance for your assistance in this from the entire HeroMachine team!

Now that we don’t have anything on the Tuesday slot here on the blog, I was thinking “what would be a good idea to fill that slot?” I’d kinda like for it not be a rehash of something I’ve done before. Then an idea struck me, but I wanted to run it by you guys before I went a head with it.

The idea is kind of hard to explain, so I try to word it best I can. What I was thinking of doing is basically screen capturing myself making a character on Heromachine, narrating the process and then posting the video as that weeks post. Obviously it wouldn’t just be me creating a whole character in one video, that video would be like 2 hours long and no-one has time for that, but instead it would be broken up into segments of around 20- 30 minutes (hopefully), say video 1 would be the base and posing, video 2 would be costume, video 3 would be hair/ face, video 4 would be background (if there is one) and video 5 would be shading and other finishing touches. That way it would take us all the way up to Christmas and then we can go from there. Also, it gives you guys a chance to have some control over the content, because you can make suggestions for things I can do with the character for the next weeks video (basically like a community character build only with one person doing the actual building). It might also help some of the newcomers with some of the more advanced aspects of Heromachine 3, such as shading and posing.

And the good thing about having this as a Tuesday slot, is that I’m not working on Tuesdays so I’ll be able to record the video same day and, because I’m in the UK, if I record in the morning it should be up at the regular time for all you guys across the pond.

So what do you guys think. If you like the idea, we can start next week (so you can make suggestions in the comments if you so wish, just remember, when it comes to posing, I’m no DeliriousAl). If not, then I’ll try to come up with something else.

I felt the need to take a moment to explain to you all our rules on Copyrighted characters as it relates to Heromachine art and all sites Owned and Ran by Heromachine founder and creator Mr Jeff Hebert,

Now while this information is posted all over our forums ( Stickied to the top of each sub forum ) I know we have a lot of new members as well as many members that do not frequent the forums at all so:

Firstly the Rule:

It is strictly forbidden for you too post pictures created with the use of any version of Heromachine to any official Heromachine site ( This website, the Facebook page, etc ) of any and all copyright characters (including amalgamations of copyrighted characters ).

Now for the reasons for this rule:

If you create a Heromachine picture of a character from a comic book, game, movie, or other existing work (i.e., Wolverine, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, etc.) it has the potential of causing legal issues for Jeff, whom has already had threats of lawsuits in the past over Heromachine. Jeff does not want any additional legal troubles and so he forbids the use of his program for copyrighted characters and while he can not actually stop you from using the program to violate this rule he can control what content is posted to his sites.

Now I know some of you are thinking to yourselves that the fair use clause in the copyright laws should protect heromachine, and that Jeff would win any lawsuit brought forward against it, I will just say that this is not necessarily the case since Jeff makes money off of heromachine through ads. But let us assume for the moment that it is 100% assured Jeff would win a legal battle, he does not have the deep pockets that a Marvel, or DC Comics, or a BBC, etc does; which could grind him into the dust with delays and other legal moves designs to drain his pockets before the case ever reaches a court room. But again Let us assume Jeff has the money to successfully fend off a legal challenge he simply does not want to headache of having to do so thus the likely result of such a lawsuit would be the closing down of this site and all Versions of Heromachine forever disappearing. None of us want this to happen and so we have rules in place to help prevent it!

It is my Job, and the job of all my fellow moderators to be the bad guys and see that our rules are adhered to. I know that sometimes our decisions are unpopular but believe we when I say we do not delete or edit your posts for the fun of it. We do it to protect Jeff and to keep our community alive!

Hi all, it’s been a long time since I chimed in ’round these parts, so I thought I should give everyone a quick update on where things stand here at HeroMachine World Headquarters, also known as my kitchen.

I’m being literal here. I got two people submit stuff in week one, and since then nothing. Ok, Skybandit did send in a number of his Movie reviews, but the idea here was not just to showcase one community members work (as good as they are), because otherwise we’d have just given Skybandit a blog spot. So what I will do is, first off say thanks to Skybandit and Herr D for participating, I really appreciate you helping out, and second, declare the submissions open again (here’s the link for rules and stuff if you’re interested: Link). However, as I’m not expecting anything neither should you guys. If I do get sent something (because I know that some people have expressed interest but haven’t been able to put something together yet) I will feature it, but this is not going to be a weekly post anymore. I have sorted out something to fill tomorrows slot on the blog which I’m sure people will like, but unfortunately this looks like the end for Community Submissions, which is a shame.

And that brings me on to my next point, which I will try to be fair and civil about (something which I spectacularly failed to do in one of my DeviantART journals last week). The reason I started the Community Submissions was because people were complaining that there wasn’t enough content on the Blog anymore, so I thought “hey, why don’t we let people decide what the want to feature on the blog by letting them submit it themselves”. And when I suggested the idea it was met with great enthusiasm. So for it to only last two weeks is hugely disheartening. Last week I was quite prepared to just give up all of my blog posting duties, with exception of the CDC’s, because of it, though I have changed my mind since then, but my reasoning for doing so still stands. I honestly don’t know if half the stuff I do is well received or not. The first Community Submission got a few comments, but the one last week got none. The Random Panels get a few comments, but it is so hard to find ones that a) haven’t been used before by Jeff or in one of the Caption Contests and b) that I can come up with something witty to comment on in just a short title. And as for the Doctor Who reviews. Yes I know not everybody watches the show, but that is the only thing I do on the blog that I actually brought to the blog because I genuinely wanted to do it and I know there are more people on this site that watch the show that don’t comment. Even though we don’t often see eye to eye, Malfars comments on my reviews are usually the highlight of my week in terms of the blog, because it’s the only proper interaction and discussion that any of the blog posts provide anymore. That’s what I wanted the Community Submissions to be, a chance for the community to get together and discuss our individual interests. But instead what I got was a stunning and definitive yes followed by a stunning and even more definitive un-caring shrug. Thanks guys. What do you want me to do? And this is an honest question directed at you guys, all of you. You want more content. Well we have a new moderator in Linea24, who is hopefully going be bringing something to the blog at some point. And now I just want to know what you want me to do. Because obviously nothing I’ve been coming up with recently is clicking with you guys. Make your suggestions in the comments and I’ll put together a poll in a few days time and you can all vote on what you want to see brought to the blog, provided the ideas are feasible obviously.

Anyway, to sum up (incase people just want to skip all the content to this post and just want the important points): There isn’t going to be a Community Submissions post tomorrow, but people can still submit stuff if they wish. Leave suggestions for new Blog topics in the comments below.

Anyway, see you all tomorrow for my special Community Submission substitute. And sorry for being a grouch during this post. It doesn’t feel good, but hopefully it gets the point across.

JR & dblade; Jeff has restored your permission levels to moderator so now you once again have the ability to moderator posts in the forums. If you need help figuring out the new moderation tools drop me an email Kaldath@Heromachine.com

HammerKnight & Djuby: You both have also been restored to moderator status. I know you have both stepped down due to real life issues that have made it so you could not devote the time you used to to the forum, but you both are very valuable members of the community and after talking with Jeff we decided to let you remain as Honorary / part time moderators. If either of you would like to have your moderatorship fulling revoked drop me an email and I will see to it, otherwise you are stuck with us!!!!

Moderators and Blog Authors: With the forums no longer allowing private messaging, at least until Ben finishes writing a new plug in for it, Jeff and I will need a list of all your email addresses so we can contact you at need. Please drop us both an email at Kaldath@Heromachine.com and afdstudios@gmail.com

LASTLY

I am looking for one or two of our female community members to join our Staff here as Moderators and also possible Blog authors. If any of you ladies are interest in the position drop me an email and we will discuss it.

With the new forums back up and zippier than ever thanks to the Ben the Badass, we’re having a debate about whether they should go full width or remain in the current two-column setup. I’ve kept the side bar because I thought it would be handy to have the list of current contests, recent posts, and common links. But as Ben points out, most forums are full width — if you’re in the forums, you probably aren’t super concerned with the bloggy stuff.

So I figured I’d keep with longstanding HeroMachine traditions and ask — Which do you prefer?

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